jueves, 29 de diciembre de 2016

This year is likely to remembered as a turning point for climate change. It’s the year the impacts of rising carbon pollution became impossible to ignore. The world is overheating and vast swaths of the planet have suffered the consequences. At the same time, it’s also a year where world leaders crafted and agreed on a number of plans to try to turn the tide of carbon pollution and move toward a clean energy future. It’s clear 2016 was a year where planetary peril and human hope stood out in stark contrast. Here are the 10 most important climate milestones of the year.

The Energy Department announced today it is investing $19 million to improve the efficiency of our nation’s homes, offices, schools, hospitals, restaurants and stores. These projects will develop advanced building technologies that will help American consumers and businesses save money on their utility bills, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and create jobs.

Buildings are the largest energy consumer in the nation—accounting for more than 40 percent of the nation’s total energy demand and greenhouse emissions, and resulting in an annual energy bill totaling $430 billion. On average, nearly a third of this energy is wasted. It’s estimated that if the U.S. reduced energy use in buildings by 20 percent, the nation could save nearly $80 billion annually on energy bills.

Today’s 18 innovative projects will develop sensors and energy modeling tools to make our buildings smarter, reduce refrigerant leaks and improve the efficiency of heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration (HVAC&R) systems, and produce a low-impact, gas-powered heat pump that can operate efficiently in colder climates. The projects will also support renewable energy market penetration through energy storage, pinpoint air leaks and reduce energy losses through the building envelope, and cut electricity use by transmitting sunlight to building interiors.“Improving the efficiency of our nation’s buildings presents one of our best opportunities for cutting Americans’ energy bills and slashing greenhouse gas emissions,” said Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. “These innovative technologies will make our buildings smarter, healthier, and more efficient, driving us toward our goal of reducing the energy use intensity of the U.S. buildings sector by 30 percent by 2030.”

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory(LBNL) (Berkeley, California) will develop a platform for design and specification of HVAC control sequences that inter-operates with both whole-building energy simulation and automated control implementation. OpenBuildingControl will eliminate the manual translation steps currently associated with HVAC control design, reducing both effort and error.

Carnegie Mellon University(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) will develop a sensing and control system that can save significant energy by accurately estimating the number of occupants in an area, and then adjusting HVAC operations accordingly. Current HVAC systems waste energy by assuming maximum occupancy in each room.

PARC(Palo Alto, California) will develop a wireless system of peel-and-stick sensor nodes that are powered by radio frequency hubs, relaying data to building management systems that can significantly reduce energy use.

The University of California-Berkeley(Berkeley, California) will create a low-cost, open-source, wireless sensor system, which will be integrated with building management systems, their components, and smartphones to enable installation of secure and easily deployed building energy efficiency applications, such as demand response.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) will develop system-level architecture for a plug-and-play multi-sensor platform, which can use peel-and-stick sensors less than a quarter of an inch thick that are powered by indoor, high-performance, flexible photovoltaics.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory(Menlo Park, California) will develop a toolkit for the Department’s open-source VOLTTRON platform, which supports a wide range of building energy management and grid integration applications. The toolkit adds testing and simulation tools to cut costs by as much as 30 percent for systems integration, distributed energy, and microgrid development projects.

Columbia University (New York, New York) will use metering and automated personalized feedback to encourage occupants of multifamily buildings to save electricity by reducing appliance use or shifting use to non-peak hours.

HVAC&R and Joining Technologies

Optimized Thermal Systems(Beltsville, Maryland) will develop a manufacturing procedure for a serpentine heat exchanger for HVAC&R systems that has 90 percent fewer joints than current heat exchangers; joint leaks can release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and reduce system efficiency.

ORNL will develop a residential, gas-fired split heat pump that will use an ammonia refrigerant, which is not a greenhouse gas and can convert chemical energy to heating and cooling without using any moving seals.

Windows and Building Envelope

LBNL will develop insulation that is 2 to 4 times more efficient than conventional materials and at a comparable installed cost. The new insulation will make it easier and cost-effective to retrofit existing buildings.

LBNL will also extend its popular detailed envelope heat-transfer model THERM with moisture-transfer modeling capabilities to help industry evaluate and design energy-efficient facades that mitigate moisture and problems, avoiding structural degradation and mold.

Iowa State University(Ames, Iowa) will develop an infiltration diagnostics system that uses a laser to locally heat a portion of the building envelope, and then uses an infrared camera to pinpoint air leaks.

Glint Photonics(Burlingame, California) will develop a stationary, roof-mounted concentrating daylighting system that uses internal optics to track the sun in the sky and light guides to transmit the light to the building interior, thereby reducing the energy use for electric lighting by 40-70 percent.

Energy Modeling

The University of Miami (Miami, Florida) will integrate several existing energy modeling packages to create a tool that is customized for the design and operational requirements of data centers and large computer rooms. These account for a significant and growing share of energy consumption in the U.S., reaching 2 percent of all electricity use in 2013.

The Energy Department's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) accelerates development and facilitates deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and market-based solutions that strengthen U.S. energy security, environmental quality, and economic vitality. EERE supports innovative technologies that reduce both risk and costs of bringing energy efficient building technologies online. Learn more about the Department's efforts to help homes and buildings save energy at Energy.gov.

miércoles, 28 de diciembre de 2016

In September, the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home program hosted the 4th Annual Leading Builder Round Table Meeting prior to the EEBA Conference and Expo in Dallas, TX. Winners of the 2016 Housing Innovation Awards gathered for a half-day meeting to share lessons learned in constructing and selling Zero Energy Ready Homes, key challenges moving forward, and provide feedback to program staff on what DOE can do to improve the program.

This annual meeting plays a major role in identifying and shaping the future efforts of the Zero Energy Ready Home program to best support our builder partners and further expand the market for Zero Energy Ready Homes. At the 2015 Leading Builder Round Table Meeting, much of the conversation surrounded the need for additional resources to help with marketing and communication. As a result, 2016 saw the launch of the Tour of Zero and accompanying Consumer Video.

Sales and Marketing

A major takeaway from this year’s meeting was that sales and marketing presents a much bigger challenge to Zero Energy Ready Home builders than technical barriers and construction issues. In other words, we have gotten to the point where building a Zero Energy Ready Home is not difficult. The hard part is to find ways to communicate the benefits to consumers. Competing with existing homes and other new builds, partners find it difficult to communicate the true value and benefits of their high performance homes to potential customers. One area where builders did find success in reaching consumers was via social media, which the majority of builders indicated they were using to promote their Zero Energy Ready Homes and grow their brand.

Education and Outreach

The group agreed that educating a variety of different stakeholder groups was necessary in helping to continue to increase the market share of Zero Energy Ready Homes. Consumer education was high on this list, highlighting the need for a strong consumer video. Additionally, many builders indicated the need for training for sub-contractors, to better understand the program specs, and realtors, to be able to communicate the benefits of these high-performance homes.

Technology

On this topic, several builders mentioned the integration of smart homes and home automation packages that could also include smart monitoring systems. The advancements in smart home technology and the capabilities they have monitoring and reducing energy use with an interconnected home is a valuable package builders can offer. Additionally, while the majority of builders are still using stick‐frame construction, several builders indicated that more time and investment should be made into understanding advanced wall systems such as SIPS and ICFs. Properly ventilating tight homes is also an issue for many builders, including the need for supplemental dehumidification.

martes, 27 de diciembre de 2016

Cheaper coal and cheaper gas will not derail the transformation and decarbonisation of the world’s power systems. By 2040, zero-emission energy sources will make up 60% of installed capacity. Wind and solar will account for 64% of the 8.6TW of new power generating capacity added worldwide over the next 25 years, and for almost 60% of the $11.4 trillion invested.

Tesla Motors Inc. and Panasonic
Corp. completed work on an agreement to begin manufacturing solar cells and
modules at Tesla’s factory in Buffalo, New York, eventually bringing some 1,400
jobs to the region.

Production will begin this
summer, with the factory’s output capacity expanding to 1 gigawatt by 2019, the
companies said in a statement Tuesday. Panasonic will invest more than 30
billion yen ($256 million) on the installation of production equipment, Yayoi
Watanabe, a spokeswoman for the Osaka-based company, said by phone. The total
investment wasn’t disclosed in the statement.

Among the jobs being created are
more than 500 manufacturing positions. Palo Alto, California-based Tesla is
expanding its manufacturing base in the U.S. and Chief Executive Officer Elon
Musk is on President-elect Donald Trump’s business advisory team.

“We already knew about this deal,
but now it’s finalized,” said Ben Kallo, an analyst with Robert W. Baird.
“Panasonic is covering the capital costs, and Tesla is buying the modules.
You’re seeing the stock break out a bit.”

Tesla shares rose 3 percent to
$219.84 at 1:09 p.m. New York time and have declined about 8.2 percent this
year.

lunes, 26 de diciembre de 2016

China is reducing the amount of
money it pays to newly completed solar and wind power generators for their
electricity, in order to reflect declines in construction costs, the country’s
price regulator and economic planner said Monday.

The nation will cut tariffs paid
to solar farms by as much as 19 percent in 2017 from this year’s levels, and by
as much as 15 percent for wind mills in 2018 from current prices, according to
a statement posted on the National Development and Reform Commission’s website.
The changes will help reduce subsidies paid to new photovoltaic and wind power
projects by about 6 billion yuan ($863 million) annually, the NDRC said.

The move comes as average solar
panel prices have tumbled about 30 percent this year, according to data from
Bloomberg New Energy Finance, resulting in a lowering of the bids that solar
developers offer to build projects. Prices of wind turbines also fell in 2016,
according to London-based BNEF.

China will also encourage local
authorities to continue making use of auctions to select renewable energy
developers, in order to further lower power prices, according to the NDRC.

Reductions to renewable power
prices will be smallest in regions in China that have the calmest wind and the
weakest solar radiation, according to the NDRC. These areas are also where
people or industries make use of more electricity, it said.

France on Thursday inaugurated the world's first "solar
highway", a road paved with solar panels providing enough energy to power
the street lights of the small Normandy town of Tourouvre.

The one-kilometre (half-mile) "Wattway" covered
with 2,800 square metres (30,000 square feet) of resin-coated solar panels was
hooked up to the local power grid as Environment Minister Segolene Royal looked
on.

"This new use of solar energy takes advantage of large
swathes of road infrastructure already in use... to produce electricity without
taking up new real estate," Royal said in a statement.

The minister announced a four-year "plan for the
national deployment of solar highways" with initial projects in western
Brittany and southern Marseille.

An average of 2,000 cars use the road in Tourouvre each day,
testing the resistance of the panels for the project carried out by French
civil engineering firm Colas, a subsidiary of construction giant Bouygues.

The idea, which is also under exploration in Germany, the
Netherlands and the United States, is that roadways are occupied by cars only
around 20 percent of the time, providing vast expanses of surface to soak up
the sun's rays.

Colas says that in theory France could become energy
independent by paving only a quarter of its million kilometres of roads with
solar panels.

jueves, 22 de diciembre de 2016

The U.S. economy expanded more than previously reported last
quarter on bigger contributions from a range of factors including services
spending, intellectual property and construction by state and local
governments.

Gross domestic product rose at a 3.5 percent annualized rate
in the three months ended in September, compared with a prior estimate of 3.2
percent, Commerce Department figures showed Thursday. The median forecast in a
Bloomberg survey called for a 3.3 percent gain.

The revised growth estimate, still the fastest in two years,
reflected updated figures on research and development expenses from companies,
spending by nonprofit institutions and use of financial services. The economy
is unlikely to sustain such a pace in the final three months of the year,
instead probably growing at a 2.2 percent rate, according to the median
projection of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg earlier this month.

Economists’ projections for the updated advance in
third-quarter GDP, the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S.,
ranged from 2.8 percent to 3.5 percent. This is the last of three estimates for
the quarter before annual revisions in July.

Household purchases, which account for almost 70 percent of
the economy, grew at a 3 percent annualized rate, stronger than the 2.8 percent
pace previously estimated. That change reflected primarily higher spending on
services by incorporating newly available data from the Census Bureau,
according to the report.

Estimates of the contributions to growth by trade and
inventories were little changed. Stripping out those items, the two most
volatile components of GDP, so-called final sales to domestic purchasers
increased at a 2.1 percent rate, compared with the prior estimate of a 1.7
percent pace.

Corporate spending on equipment decreased at a 4.5 percent
annualized pace in the third quarter, compared with the 4.8 percent drag
previously estimated, and subtracted 0.3 percentage point from growth, the
report showed. Those outlays had declined 2.9 percent in the prior three months.

Emerging markets are leapfrogging the developed world thanks to cheap
panels.

A transformation is happening in global energy markets that’s worth
noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming
the cheapest form of new electricity.

This has happened in isolated projects in the past: an especially
competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap
solar costs. But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and
natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging
markets are costing less to build than wind projects, according to fresh data
from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The chart below shows the average cost of new wind and solar from 58
emerging-market economies, including China, India, and Brazil. While solar was
bound to fall below wind eventually, given its steeper price declines, few
predicted it would happen this soon.

“Solar investment has gone from nothing—literally nothing—like five years
ago to quite a lot,” said Ethan Zindler, head of U.S. policy analysis at BNEF.
“A huge part of this story is China, which has been rapidly deploying solar”
and helping other countries finance their own projects.

Half the Price of Coal

This year has seen a remarkable run for solar power. Auctions, where
private companies compete for massive contracts to provide electricity,
established record after record for cheap solar power. It started with a
contract in January to produce electricity for $64 per megawatt-hour in India;
then a deal in August pegging $29.10 per megawatt hour in Chile. That’s
record-cheap electricity—roughly half the price of competing coal power.

“Renewables are robustly entering the era of undercutting” fossil fuel
prices, BNEF chairman Michael Liebreich said in a note to clients this week.

Those are new contracts, but plenty of projects are reaching completion
this year, too. When all the 2016 completions are tallied in coming months,
it’s likely that the total amount of solar photovoltaics added globally will
exceed that of wind for the first time. The latest BNEF projections call for 70
gigawatts of newly installed solar in 2016 compared with 59 gigawatts of wind.

The overall shift to clean energy can be more expensive in wealthier
nations, where electricity demand is flat or falling and new solar must compete
with existing billion-dollar coal and gas plants. But in countries that are
adding new electricity capacity as quickly as possible, “renewable energy will
beat any other technology in most of the world without subsidies,” said
Liebreich.

Turning Points

The world recently passed a turning point and is adding more capacity for
clean energy each year than for coal and natural gas combined. Peak fossil-fuel
use for electricity may be reached within the next decade.

Thursday’s BNEF report, called Climatescope, ranks and profiles emerging
markets for their ability to attract capital for low-carbon energy projects.
The top-scoring markets were China, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, South Africa, and
India.

When it comes to renewable energy investment, emerging markets have taken
the lead over the 35 member nations of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation & Development (OECD), spending $154.1 billion in 2015 compared
with $153.7 billion by those wealthier countries, BNEF said. The growth rates
of clean-energy deployment are higher in these emerging-market states, so they
are likely to remain the clean energy leaders indefinitely, especially now that
three-quarters have established clean-energy targets.

Still, the buildup of wind and solar takes time, and fossil fuels remain
the cheapest option for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
Coal and natural gas will continue to play a key role in the alleviation of
energy poverty for millions of people in the years to come.

But for populations still relying on expensive kerosene generators, or
who have no electricity at all, and for those living in the dangerous smog of
thickly populated cities, the shift to renewables and increasingly to solar
can’t come soon enough.

Over the past six years, the cost of solar energy has
dropped dramatically, to the point where it is now even cheaper than wind power
in emerging markets like China and India. This may be largely due to rising
investments in solar over the last few years. Now, there is electricity being
produced in Chile for $29.10 per megawatt hour–half the price of power produced
by coal.

"Renewables are robustly entering the era of
undercutting" energy made by fossil fuels, Bloomberg New Energy Finance
chairman Michael Liebreich wrote this week.

This is great news for developing nations, which do not
generally have the kind of infrastructure that developed countries have
dedicated to fossil fuels already in place. As they build their energy
infrastructure, it will make sense to go with cheaper, renewable options, more
so than it does for a country like the United States to abandon our formidable
fossil-fuel based infrastructure.

The yen was trading at 118.12 to the dollar at 5:09 a.m. ET, following the Bank of Japan's first meeting since Donald Trump's U.S. election victory, after the bank upgraded its assessment of the economy while keeping its policy stance unchanged. The Japanese currency has weakened by more than 10 percent against the greenback since Nov. 8, a move that should help lift inflation in the economy. http://quotes.wsj.com/fx/USDJPY